Lil Bub Brings Cat Celebrity to Tribeca

A poster for cat-celebrity documentary Lil Bub & Friendz, produced by VICE.

The appeal of online cat videos and pictures may be one of the Internet’s most democratizing features, and VICE magazine has pounced on this with documentary Lil Bub & Friendz, premiering at Tribeca this week.

The one-hour documentary tells the story of Lil Bub, a runt-of-the-litter kitten from Indiana whose deformities – large eyes, stubby legs, extra toes – elicit exclamations wherever she goes. Photos of Bub uploaded by her owner Mike Bridavsky turned her into an Internet sensation, garnering media fame and a line of fan merchandise. Through interviews with other cat celebrities, the documentary explores why these felines have set the Internet on fire.

“These are like the new pop culture characters that people cares about,” says ‘meme manager’ Ben Lasher in the film. Lasher represents viral cat phenomenon Grumpy Cat (over 820,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook), Nyan Cat (1.6 million likes) and Keyboard Cat (featuring in an original video viewed over 30 million times on YouTube).

The documentary started as a ten-minute short for Vice Films about a cat video festival taking place at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, pitched by communications associate Juliette Eisner, who directed the film with Vice magazine global editor Andy Capper.

“I thought it was the most hilarious and interesting thing [that] a very renowned art center would hold a video festival for cat videos,” Ms. Eisner said in an interview. “But when we got there, we saw how big of a deal it was.”

The first 15 minutes of the documentary features tightly edited interviews with CEO of cat caption site ‘I can has cheeseburger,’ Ben Huh, media analyst Sam Ford and feline sociologist Jeffrey Bussolini who tries to explain how neoteny – seeing juvenile traits in adult organisms that might inspire a feeling of protection – might be behind the cat video craze.

Diving into the addictive nature of the film and its potential to earn cat owners money through an online fanbase gives the movie a fascinating foundation, and at the start, the movie is a fast-paced showcase of the cat video world and people’s attempts to understand it. After the first 15 minutes, it slows down to longer, more drawn out scenes such as with the family that found Bub, the exotic cat center that Bub’s owner donates money to from merchandise profits, and interview with celebrity cat owners.

Ms. Eisner thinks the film was a Tribeca pick not only because it’s a heartwarming story of a guy and his pet, but also because it explores “what people want on the Internet today, how they use the Internet and how it can translate in to career and revenue.”

While the doc explores a number of reasons the cat video scene has become so huge, Capper says he understands how people can get “caught up” in the scene. “I can see why they like these cats more than certain TV or rock stars,” he says. “They’re not fame-grabbing people with orange skin.”